The present invention relates generally to battery-powered electronic devices, and, in particular, to selectively audibly alerting a user as to the status of the direct current (DC) power source of such a device.
High technology, battery-powered electronic devices are prevalent in today""s society. Such devices include cellular telephones, portable compact disk (CD) players, portable digital versatile disk (DVD) players, personal two-way radios, personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptop computers, and camcorders, just to name a few. Many of these devices typically provide an audible alert to let the device user know when the battery power level is getting low to enable the user to take appropriate action (e.g., save his work, end a call, turn off the unit, and so forth) before exhausting the battery. The alert is also used as a reminder to recharge or change the battery, as applicable.
While the audible alert is a very useful feature, it can also be an annoyance when the alert sounds at certain times. For example, when a person leaves his or her cellular phone on the nightstand next to the bed and the alert sounds at two o""clock in the morning, the person may not necessarily appreciate the feature he or she finds so useful during the day. As an additional example, when the user enters a meeting, he or she may not appreciate the low battery alert sounding during the meeting.
Some cellular phones include a feature that allows a user to switch from an audible alert (e.g., ring or ring tone) to a tactile alert (e.g., vibration) for purposes of informing the user of the phone""s receipt of an incoming call. Other cellular phones include a feature that allows the user to assign the type of incoming call alert used (audible or tactile) to the user""s environment as part of the so-called xe2x80x9cstylexe2x80x9d settings of the phone. For example, the phone user might set an audible incoming call alert for xe2x80x9cnormalxe2x80x9d use and a tactile incoming call alert for xe2x80x9cmeetingxe2x80x9d use.
While these approaches allow the user to silence the audible incoming call alert in real time or to coincide with an environment setting, none of these approaches apply to the low battery alert. In addition, all of these approaches require the user to remember, at the appropriate time (e.g., before going to bed, before entering the meeting, and so on), to change the audible alert to the tactile alert or change the phone""s style settings to match the new environment. Failure to remember can result in undesirable emanation of the audible alert. Further, since existing alert changing techniques focus on the mechanism for alerting the user of an unpredictable event (i.e., receipt of an incoming call), none of the existing techniques estimate the likelihood of the event and alert the user proactively prior to the event.
Therefore, a need exists for a method and apparatus for selectively providing an audible low power alert to a user of an electronic device that overcome the alerting deficiencies of the prior art.